آناهیتا پرتوی

The purpose of this research is to use analytical and literature review methods to compare and analyze the the moral virtue of “Truth” metaphor in two famous Middle Persian and Dari Persian texts(“menog I xrad” and “Golestan Saadi”). We also aim to understand the source domains of this metaphor based on the contemporary metaphor theory theory. Our analysis showed that five name- of- mapping; including Thing, Act, Path, Speech and Accessories were found in“menog I xrad” and “Golestan Saadi” . Thing and Act are two name-of-mapping which are common in both texts but [truth is a Path] and [truth is a Speech] was just appear in Mēnōg-ī-xrad and [truth is an Accessory] was just appeared in Golestan Sa'di. As discourse will show two aspects of Civilization and Culture in mentality of readers, maybe we can conclude that [truth is an Accessory] is the civilizational aspect of discourse which is emphasized in Golestan while [truth is Speech] and [truth is a Path] both shows the cultural aspect of discourse in Mēnōg-ī-xrad. Of course there is no priority between these two aspects which were discussed and just shows that in pre-Islamic and post Islamic period Truth was an important discourse in Iran.

Philosophers have offered many meanings and descriptions for morality. Morality is not an alien factor to the world, in fact it is interweaved with every aspect of the world. This becomes apparent in metaphor and materialization of moral deeds in word views. The purpose of this research is to use analytical and literature review methods to compare and analyze the “Badness” metaphor in two famous Persian texts, . We also aim to understand the source domains of this metaphor based on the contemporary metaphor theory. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) believe that metaphors are cognitive tools that humans use to make abstract concepts more comprehendible. Our analysis showed that the "Badness is a thing" name-of-mapping n both Mēnōg- ī- Xrad (with 60%) and Golestan (with 67%) has the highest occurrence frequncy. This shows that even although Mēnōg- ī- Xrad is a pre-Islamic text and Golestan post-Islamic, their moral content are in fact two aspects of a singular world view when looked through a philosophical lens. Both texts believe that the world has multiple orders (the material life and the after life) and the materialization of each moral act will manifest itself in th next order of being (after life)

Mēnōg-ī-Xerad is a text, written in middle Persian, that contains a series of questions asked by Dana and answered by Mēnōg-ī-Xerad.  Golestan-e-Sa’di is a prosed book that contains an introduction and eight chapters written by Sa’di. Using descriptive-analytical method, the preset study aimed at comparing the frequency of goodness metaphors in these two texts. Goodness was the most frequent virtue in these two texts, with 38 occurrences in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad and 17 occurrences in Golestan-e-Sa’di. Analysis revealed 19 names of mapping, such as “Things”, “Act” and so on. “Thing”, “Act”, “State”, and “Instrument” were the common names of mapping in the two texts but with different frequencies. [Goodness is a Thing] with 44% occurrences in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad and [Goodness is an Act] with 47% in Golestan-e-Sa’di were the most frequent names of mapping. [Goodness is a Thing] in most cases in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad refers to a constantly moving thing from a person to another or from a place to a person. Perhaps the existence of the name of mapping [goodness is a blessing] in Mēnōg-ī-Xerad is due to Zurvanite fatalistic beliefs that were common in the late Sassanid era. Also, the frequent name of mapping [Goodness is an Act] in Golestan indicates the pragmatic views of its writer.

Minooye Kherad is a consultative text in Middle Persian including questions and replies to which an imaginary character named “Dana” asks Minooye Kherad and he replies to them. Gulistan is a prose including an introduction and eight chapters written by Saadi. The present study has been done with a descriptive-analytical approach and compares conceptual metaphor of animosity in Minooye Kherad and Gulistan. Animosity is a common moral abomination of the two texts and its happening in Minooye Kherad and Gulistan was 5 and 4, respectively. After derivation of all animosity metaphors in both texts, four metaphors were found regarding conception of animosity namely as: object, action, device, status. Even though with a difference in frequency, object and action were common in both texts. The most frequent metaphor is “Animosity is an action.” which was observed in Minooye Kherad and Gulistan with occurrence of 40% and 75%, respectively. “Animosity is a device.” and “Animosity is an action.” were only observed in Minooye Kherad that may imply on the fact that even though the writer or writers of Minooye Kherad believed that animosity can be an action, it can also be a device and a status which was not observed in Gulistan. 75% occurrence of “Animosity is an action”, in Gulistan may imply on the writer as a pragmatic one that recognizes animosity as an action more than anything else.

The present study is aimed to compare the conceptual metaphor of “grief” in Marsiya(written by Mullah Ali Fakher) and Habsieh(written by Masud Sa’ad Salman) poems, from cognitive semantics point of view. Data includes 4300 verses from selected Marsiya and about 18000 verses from Habsieh. 12 names of mapping were found in Habsieh and 16 in Marsiya (including: “Power”, “Thing”, “pain”, “Disaster”, “Hardship”, “Human”, “living thing”, “Time/Event”, “Material”, “Element of nature”, “Container”, “fire”, “Utensil”, “Food”, “Captivity”,” Disease”, “Plant” and “culture” . 8 names of mapping are common in both Habsieh and Marsiya including: “Thing”, “Human”, “Fire”, “Material”, “Dish/container”, “Utensil”, “Food/edible” and “Disease”. But Habsieh and Marsiya are different in elaborating the feeling of “grief”. For instance “grief” with the name of mapping “Human” is a broody and depressed human being in Marsiya while in Habsieh , “grief” with the name of mapping “Human” is a friend and companion for a man who is alone in prison.

There remains a lot of works in Sogdian language, which was one of the most important Iranian middle east languages and lingua franca of the Silk Road in the 6th-10th centuries, in three scripts: Sogdian, Manichaean, and Syriac. During the 20thcentury and by the endeavors of European Iranologists these texts were gathered and published and were gradually made available to researchers. There are some tales amongst these published texts that are the focus of this study. These tales are analyzed using Ulrich Marzolph‘s classification of tales. They are sorted by their subject and also similar stories in other sources are found and compared.